Jack Be Quick Ch. 06

A plain black Dodge sedan squealed to a stop in front of my car and the driver stretched out across the seat to get the passenger door open. He waved an FBI identification wallet in his left hand and yelled for me to get in. I rolled on the ground to get clear of my car and made a running dive for the front seat, still holding my pistol. The Dodge accelerated forward and the door's inertia slammed it shut. I

was in the most awkward position I could imagine, my knees on the seat, my elbows resting on the floor, and my feet about where my head ought to be. But I was all in one piece! I took a deep breath, maybe the first full breath I'd taken since I parked at the police station. Then I pulled my knees up close to my chest and somehow wiggled into a normal sitting position with my left hand on the dashboard and my right hand still holding my pistol. I gulped another deep breath and rasped out the emergency code word, and added, "I'm Jack. Who are you?"

The driver gave the correct reply and said, "Hi, Jack. I'm Pete. Jerry's boss."

"Any more of your cars coming?"

"Two. One's just coming up behind us now."

I lowered my head to look in the side mirror, and saw a gray Dodge with flashing red and blue lights in the grill. Pete pushed a button and a siren started to wail. Boy, could he make that Dodge fly! We roared through intersections, drove on every lane there was on the street, even the curb lane on the left side, and wove our way out of the business section and into a residential neighborhood. Pete shut off the siren then and I could see the flashing lights go out on the car behind us. We slowed down to the speed limit, stopped for stop signs, and finally parked in front of a regular-looking house. The front door of the house opened, and when I looked up I recognized Jerry. I slid my pistol into its holster and threw the car door open. My right foot hit the ground a foot from the curb, and the left must have landed five feet beyond, as I raced up to the open door and ducked inside. Jerry was laughing at me. "How's the old adrenalin pump working, Jack?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Pete came up onto the porch, strolling as if nothing had happened, and stepped through the open doorway. I could feel the tension in my body easing off, and my knees started to shake. I flopped down on a sofa and looked from Pete to Jerry to another agent who was just coming into the living room, wearing a white shirt and tie with a shoulder harness neatly displayed where his suitcoat would cover it when he went out. I saw that he had a towel in his hand, and he came over to me and asked, "Where are you hurt?"

"Hurt! Am I hurt?" I asked.

"Just hold still." He held the towel up to my right ear while he looking me over. "I think you got a cut on your ear and that's all. You hold this towel up to your ear and we'll get you patched up right away." As he stood up another man, older than the rest, came into the room with a big, and I mean really big, first aid kit. He fooled around with my ear and a few minutes later I was wearing a big bandage that covered the whole right side of my head. My ear was getting numb underneath it. Pretty soon I could hardly feel a thing there, and the only discomfort was from adhesive tape pulling on my cheek and neck.

Jerry pulled up a dining room chair and turned it around so he was riding it like a snowmobile. Pete sat in an upholstered chair across the room from me. Jerry began the conversation. "How did this thing start?"

"Some guy jumped onto the hood of my car. He probably wanted to make me think I'd hit him, so I'd stop."

"Could you recognize him if you saw him again?"

"I think so. Trouble is, the most obvious thing was a scraggly beard, and if he shaved I might not remember the rest of his looks. Wait. There was a scar that started in his forehead and ran down into his left eyebrow. If that's still there I'd know him."

"Okay. We've got him. He got hurt a little when you threw him off your car, and then his friends in the Toyota bumped into him as he stood up, and that's when he really got hurt. He's in the hospital under guard. What about the guys in the Toyota?"

"They were a blur. The guy with the gun, the one I shot, I know he had dark hair and bushy eyebrows, but that's all I remember. The driver I didn't get a good look at. Well, just his profile. Had a curved beak of a nose, like Barbra Streisand. That's all I saw."

"Well, that's pretty good, considering what was going on. How do you feel?"

"Pretty washed out now. Can I call Trudy?"

"Let it go till you feel a little stronger. Right now you'd sound shaky and scare her. I already told her what was happening and that you got out of it okay. She'll be here soon."

"Gee, thanks Jerry. Nice of you."

"We try to take care of our friends."

"Look, Jerry, the last I saw of that Toyota it was scattered all over the street in pieces. What happened to the guys in it?"

"Driver's in the hospital, may or may not make it. The shooter is dead. Somebody sprayed his brains across the car, put a bullet through an artery in his neck, and blew one side of his heart away. Had to be somebody who practices marksmanship and has ice water in his veins. If there's ever a rematch I want him on my side!"

Pete chimed in. "Jack, we have some of the coolest, best trained agents in the world on our payroll, but there aren't many who could do what you did today. You're quick and steady when you react to trouble. Any time you get tired of working for MIT, let me know. We're always looking for computer wizards but we can't find any who can drive and shoot like that."

Jerry wrapped it up. "The two guys we pulled out of the Toyota tally with your descriptions, so we can prove we have the right guys. The one who jumped on your car has a scraggly beard, but nobody mentioned the scar in his eyebrow to me. I'll check further. But we're sure there were three men involved, and between the hospital and the morgue we've got all three. These guys are no amateurs to pull a stunt like that, so I'm sure we'll find connections from them to others, maybe even some higher ups. We'll see where the facts take us.

"And thanks, Jack. What you did means a lot to us."

* * * * * * * * * *

Fifteen minutes later I was lying on the sofa in the FBI's house, propped up with some pillows, resting. A doctor had come in and checked me all over. He had just left when the front door opened again and Trudy came in. When she saw me lying there with the big bandage on my head she let out a squeak and ran over to me. "Oh, baby, you're hurt! How bad is it?"

"Just a little cut from flying glass. I guess it bled a lot but it's nothing serious. The car got shot up, but I didn't get hit at all.

"Oh my God! Who was shooting at you? Will he come back and try again?"

"No. That's one thing we can be sure of."

"What do you mean? Did the police get him? Is he locked up?"

"No, it wasn't like that at all. He got shot. Killed. He won't bother anybody again."

"Oh, that's good. I'm so glad they got him. Did you see it happen?"

"Yeah, I had a good view. Perfect." I paused and remembered what it looked like. "Right past my front sight."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm sorry I said that. It just slipped out. I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. I was the one who killed him. Three shots, three hits."

"Oh! Wow! But Jack, how did that make you feel? I mean, did it shake you up?"

"Well, it all happened fast. It was him or me. I think I handled it pretty well, and I feel good about the whole thing. He was trying to shoot me with some sort of a machine gun. If I hadn't got him, you'd be at the morgue looking at my remains right now. So I think it turned out just great. Maybe later on I'll pray for his soul, but right now I'm not in the mood. He wasn't a nice man and he got what he deserved."

Jerry walked back into the room right then. "Kids, I've gotta go down to the hospital for a while. You stay right here. Trudy, one of the guys from our office will come by to take you to your apartment so you can pack up enough stuff for you and Jack for a few days. Then he'll bring you to a safe house. Jack will already be there. You'll both stay there, probably till next Monday or Tuesday."

I got thinking about work. "Should I call Jim to tell him what happened?"

"I've already talked with him and Glenn. Don't say anything to anybody about what happened, either one of you. Jack, you'll have a small bandage on your ear, nothing like what you've got now, and your story could be that you banged your ear into a door frame while you were rearranging some furniture. Somebody will be listening to phone calls at your parents' house, so just make your regular weekly call and don't mention anything about this episode, anything at all."

"What do you mean, somebody will be listening? Who?"

"Whoever is responsible for this attack, plus the one in Utica, George's death, going through Hubie's office, and a few other things you don't need to know about."

"Do you know who it is?"

"Somebody does. There are a lot of us working on this project, and we all have different assignments. I do my thing, they do theirs, it all gets reported up the line, and analysts at desks figure it all out. One thing that happens is that once we have a good idea what happened and why, it goes into the daily report for the President. In a much condensed form, of course."

"So the President will know somebody tried to kidnap me or murder me, is that it?"

"He'll know it happened and that the assailants are all dead or captured. I doubt that he'll know your name, but he will know that it was all about this project. You're a hero but nobody will ever know about it. Welcome to the club, Jack."

* * * * * * * * * *

At the back of the kitchen, right by the door to the backyard, was the stairway down into the cellar. An agent named Abe led me down to the cellar floor, then around and down another flight. He flicked on a light switch and I was looking down a nice, neat tunnel. The floor and walls were concrete. The ceiling was about seven feet high, and looked like plywood with exposed two by fours every two feet, and a light fixture every eight feet or so. I was a little fuzzy on the directions, and asked, "This goes out back, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, out under the backyard and the back fence, sort of diagonally, to a house on the next street."

At the house on the next street we climbed two flights of stairs into a kitchen, went into the living room and up another flight to the second floor. "Here's your room. Your wife will be here soon with clothes. You can use this dresser and the closet over there. That door goes to a private bath. Should be everything you'll need."

I noticed his assumption that we were married and let it go. We might as well be, with the way we felt about each other and the way we lived. "Are any other guests staying here, Abe?"

"Not right now, but I never know what'll happen till the phone rings. There's one more suite just like this one. Meals are served downstairs. Either of you allergic to any kinds of food?"

"No. We usually eat at slightly irregular hours, and our standard diet is heavy on cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizza, with a salad when we can get it. We're college kids."

"You like Chinese?"

"Only to prevent starvation if the dog food's all gone. Rather have Wendy's or Burger King. Subway's good too. We don't like Domino's pizza since they re-invented their sauce. Pizza Hut's all right, but Trudy doesn't like anchovies. We wash it all down with a Coke or Seven-up."

"Just you wait. Get to be my age and all that's going to catch up to you. You can eat anything now, but get into your thirties and forties and you'll learn about balanced diets."

"Right now our problem is making it to our thirties and forties. Seem to be worse obstacles than junk food. We've got people taking a serious interest in us, but they're not all trying to keep us healthy."

"Yeah, that happens. Nothing to get upset about, though. If you're here recalling it, that means they missed, so just put it behind you. It's too much to wish for that there'll never be any bad guys after you, so just pray that they keep missing. Fact is nobody out there is better at their job than the guys you're working with from this Boston office. Jerry says you're pretty quick yourself. Just stay alert and you won't get hurt."

I washed up and sat down in the chair by the foot of the queen size bed. I wanted to go back over the morning's activities in my mind, to see if there was anything I'd missed in the excitement. Shouldn't there be something I could learn from it to help avoid a rerun? Had I done anything to make it easy for them?

Well, first off, I followed a routine. Every Thursday morning I drove Trudy to school at the same time, following the same route, dropped her off in front of the library, then took the most direct route to work. That was all a glaring mistake, one that almost cost me my life.

The streets I used were heavily traveled. Lots of cars, lots of pedestrians. There was no way that I could see the guy coming who jumped on the hood, or the Toyota that cut me off from the left. I'd have to find other ways to get around, where I wouldn't be so vulnerable.

Now wait, there was something about the Toyota. The driver was trying to pin me to the curb. But there was nothing to keep me from jumping the curb, and in fact that's what I did. I sat and moved my hands around in the air just above my lap to simulate the movements of the cars. None of it made a whole lot of sense unless there was another car involved, and I didn't see one. But there were cars all over the place, and any one of them could have been part of the plot.

I whipped out my cell phone and called Jerry. "Jerry, we've gotta talk. Soon. I just realized something and I've gotta tell you."

"Okay. Just sit tight and I'll be there in twenty minutes."

By the time Jerry arrived, Trudy had shown up with a suitcase full of clothes and toilet articles. I was using the top of the dresser for the street and rolled up socks for cars. Jerry hollered as he came through the front door and I yelled for him to come on up.

"You're just in time, Jerry. Watch the socks to see how it all happened. I was in the middle of the block like this." I put the white socks along the back edge of the dresser, midway between the left and right sides. "I started to move as the light changed and the guy with the beard jumped aboard, right here. I still was a long way from the corner. So I shook him off and mounted the curb, here.

"Now the street is made slightly higher in the middle of the block than at the corners, so water will run to catch basins for the storm sewer near the corners, almost at the crosswalk. I was at the high point in the street pavement. But the sidewalk is level, which makes the curb level. We'd noticed that when we did our looking around at night, but it didn't seem important then. The bad guys must have figured the height of the curb was the same all along, and assumed it would be high enough to trap me up against it. That was their mistake. They had it figured that the guy with the beard would stop me, and the Toyota angling in would keep me from moving ahead or to the left. I surprised them by going to the right, jumping the curb, and driving on the sidewalk, and that screwed up their plan.

"But think about it. I might have wanted to back up and escape that way. They had to block that escape route, which means they had to have another car, right behind me . There had to be two cars. So there were the two guys in the Toyota, plus the jumper with the beard, plus at least one more bad guy in the car behind me. Who was he, and where'd he go to?"

Jerry looked, and then moved in and ran the socks through the drill by himself. "You're right. We never looked for another car, really wouldn't have had any way to get it unless it surfaced later, the way the blue Toyota did. So you're telling me there must be another car. We've got some video from a security camera across the street and traffic light cameras at the corners. I'll tell the guys to look for a car right behind yours."

Jerry looked around. "Everything all right with your love nest?"

Trudy answered, "As long as I've got Jack here with me, safe and sound, no bullet holes, everything is just perfect."

* * * * * * * * * *

Jerry had left, we had no idea what Abe was doing, nobody was upstairs but us, and as far as I could see we'd blundered into Paradise. Trudy said nothing but walked over and locked our door and turned to me with a smirk. I think she was about to say, "Get undressed," but I was way ahead of her. My shirt was off, so were my shoes and socks, and I was working on my jeans. By the time she made it over to the bed, I was down to my underwear. I pulled the top sheet and blankets back and perched on the bed. Looking at Trudy, I asked, "Need help with anything?"

"Sure. I like it when you undress me." So I did, and she did like it. She liked it so well that it earned me a big, wet, deep kiss. And more. I was holding her tight up against me and she said, "Jack, Hon, just this once let the foreplay go. I need you inside me. When Jerry called me and said there'd been a problem but you were all right, I wondered if he was giving me the whole story. My mind was whirling, wondering if I'd ever have you with me, and if we'd ever get to make love again. Now my mind has accepted the fact that you're okay, but my bod needs to know for sure. So go ahead and take me, reassure all of me that you're still here for me."

We made love, slowly and gently, but firmly. Every stroke was smooth and deliberate, to assure Trudy's bod that I was still a force to be reckoned with. When we climaxed, it wasn't the loudest or wildest orgasm that I've ridden through with her, but it was far and away the longest. I was right there on the launch pad with her when she zoomed off to fly among the stars, and then I just hung on. As she came back to earth I pulled her tight up against me. Her legs were wrapped around me and my arms were wrapped around her, and that's how we fell asleep. I think she was worn out from worrying and I was worn out from my adrenalin rush, so right there in the middle of the day we drifted off to dreamland together.

We woke up together a couple hours later, lay there for a while snuggling and talking, and then took a shower together. Trudy managed to keep the bandage on my head dry by concentrating on things farther down on my body. Oh, yeah! After we pulled clothes out of the suitcase to put on, we took a few minutes to hang things up in the closet and fold things into drawers. By supper time we were all moved in and completely relaxed.

Jerry ate supper with us and filled us in on what the agents had found out so far. "We have names for the three known bad guys. They're just hired guns, career criminals who got paid by the job. We have two camera images of a gray or silver Audi that was right behind you. It slowed almost to a stop when you were messing around with the guy on your hood, and then when you took off over the sidewalk it swung to the left and went around the Toyota. At the next corner we lost it, but we do have a picture of you going down the cross street and the Toyota chasing you, but no Audi in sight."

"What does that mean? Why would the Audi driver run away from the action? If he'd stuck it out he might've helped the other guys catch me."

"My own theory is that he wasn't a hired gun. I think he was part of the organization that put out the contract, and he was there mainly to oversee the operation. Once he saw it going sour he wanted nothing to do with it. He fled the scene to protect his anonymity, and let the hired help finish the job if they could, or take their lumps if they couldn't. The two guys we've got in the hospital may not even know the name of the guy who hired them. We'll see what comes out when they've recovered enough to be interviewed, but the Audi driver may go on being a mystery."